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Re: [Fsuk-manchester] MS Windows on the OLPC


From: Dave Crossland
Subject: Re: [Fsuk-manchester] MS Windows on the OLPC
Date: Fri, 16 May 2008 15:07:08 +0100

2008/5/16 Tim Dobson <address@hidden>:
> Lucy wrote:
>>
>> I know that yesterday I was having problems thinking that proprietary
>> software was immoral, although I knew it was 'bad'. Today, I think
>> that things are much simpler, forcing kids to use proprietary software
>> because 'everyone else is using it' or because 'it trains them for
>> business' is wrong, completely morally wrong. It scares me to see how
>> much influence one company has and it frustrates me that kids will be
>> missing out on valuable learning because of the interest of business.
>
> Some people have found Dave Corssland's post on some mailing list on this
> issue insightful though:
> http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/olpc-open/2008-May/000868.html
> and he does raise a few good points.

It seems clear to me that Negroponte has decided there was a
choice between around 500,000 kids with internet and free
software, and millions of kids with internet and Windows. I'm not
sure which would be the biggest set back, but given we all grew up
with proprietary software and Internet access, I think it will be not
be a disaster to ship Windows on OLPC computers.

It is wrong for anyone to distribute proprietary software, yet
I do think the wider social movement (towards a free society) is
helped by tainted distros and by spreading internet access.

Although they both ship tainted systems as policy, Canonical and Red
Hat _are_ different to PCLinuxOS and Novell, since they are slowly
moving towards 100% free while the latter have no plans to. I'm slowly
moving that way too; so are many on this list. Being further along,
we ought to pressure others to catch up with us, but as long as
people are moving in the right direction, they are helping.

-- 
Regards,
Dave

I support www.gnuherds.org -
democratic free software jobs




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